The silver cord

Update: Roger Simon remembers.

I didn’t know him personally, but I’m very sorry to hear that Ron Silver has died. The NY Post says,

Actor and longtime political activist Ron Silver died this morning, succumbing to a long battle with cancer, friends of the liberal Democrat-turned-GOP stalwart told The Post.

“Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him this morning,” said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped create.

“He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years and his family is making arrangements for a private service.”

I think many of us, despite having no personal connection, can still claim kinship in that like him we have had to go through changes, sometimes abandoning or modifying our earlier beliefs in an attempt to stay faithful to our understanding of the truth. It may be, that had he lived long enough — if we live long enough — that one would go through not one but several sets of beliefs. But that is beside the point. He followed his north star as he saw it shining before him. Where he stopped was unimportant; he was the constant pilgrim. That’s all a man can do; and a life thus spent is well lived.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!